Food Choices as Life Choices

Resources

More on the Savory Institute and desertification: “holistic management,” another talk by Savory on the possible benefits of cattle on desertified/desertifying land, a recent article on the topic from Scientific American, a thoughtful follow-up interview with Savory, an article that makes clear some of the links between rising food prices and desertification, and a fact sheet that lays out the conventional wisdom regarding desertification and overgrazing.

More on “the west wasn’t won on salad”: food quotes, a blog on merging femininity with a serious “frontier spirit” and a love for cattle farming, and someexamples of the kind of pro-beef, pro-“American foundational values” blogs and products out there on the web.

Articles on food as a marker of class identity: Rachel Cooke on British food, upward mobility, and the nostalgic tastes of “lower class food,” Lisa Miller on the various political/ethical/aesthetic positions communicated by kale flakes and “the hippest cheese in New York” and the places where the choice to identify through your food comes up against the class markers of obesity and hunger, and a thoughtful piece from npr on poverty, obesity, and the cheap tastes of decadence.

A couple pieces on “the hipster” and self-representation in food choices: a wincingly clunky piece on hipster interest in reviving practices of the past, including artisanal foods, and the intersections between pleasure, nostalgia, and ethics and a snide piece from Stuff Pretentious People Like that takes a much more disdainful look at hipster food choices, viewing the bacon phenomenon as part of the ironic (read: snubbing) hipster appropriation of the food of “middle America”

Articles on PETA and the objectification of women: on an ad that links veganism with virility and, ultimately, domestic abuse, PETA’s explanation of their “graphic” tactics, a rundown of some of PETA’s ad campaigns, a Huffington Post piece on PETA’s role in the “mainstreaming of the pornification of women’s bodies,” with links to other thoughtful articles, and an interesting article on the use of gendered messages across the board in the “Nonhuman Animal Liberation” effort.